The Scroll and the Scar

The library was no longer just quiet.
It listened.

Nie Li sat beneath a crooked arch, the dust hanging thick as incense. His hands rested on the rolled scroll before him, sealed in black wax. He spoke into the stillness, voice low but edged with frustration.

“You called her priestess. Explain.”

The Voice answered from the silence. Not thunder. Not flame. But weight.

“The First Covenant was preserved through wombs, not temples.
The priestesses did not preach.
They bore.
Their blood carried the Seal into nations.
They remembered by giving life.
They multiplied what rebellion sought to erase.”

Nie Li’s jaw tightened.
“And the Second?”

“The Second will pass to patriarchs.
Men will guard the scar.
Men will carve remembrance into flesh.
Tribes will rise around them.
You, child of dust,
your line will be priest to the Sealed.
Not in power.
Not in triumph.
But in scars.”

Nie Li’s fists clenched.
“You call me priest? Father? Patriarch? I was a schemer who lost. I plotted empires, treated lives like counters on a board. And you would trust me with tribes?”

“You remember ambition.
I remember willingness.
That is enough.”

His laugh came bitter and sharp.
“First priestesses bore life. Now you ask me to scar flesh. To undo everything this world calls order.”

“The priestesses fulfilled their season.
They are many, scattered still.
But their task is complete.
The scar must pass to men.
To the Six.
To you.”

Nie Li’s throat closed. The thought twisted him — women had borne life, and now he was called to bear wounds. To scar, not to create. To cut, not to cradle. It felt less like honor than a curse branded as covenant.

He lowered his head into his palms. He wanted to spit the word heresy.

Footsteps broke the silence.

He looked up.

Xiao Ning’er entered the alcove, lamplight catching on her hair. In her hands: a scroll tied with red silk, and a knife with an obsidian handle. She set them carefully on the table.

Nie Li swallowed. The very image of what the Voice had spoken — a priestess bearing what she did not know.
But he said nothing.

She untied the silk. The parchment unfurled with a breath of dust, as if lungs exhaled from centuries past. No title. No name. Only Hei Jin script curling like roots across the page.

She couldn’t read it.
But Nie Li could.

He traced the lines with his finger, then read aloud:

“Grind the black stone until it weeps dust.
Let the edge die, that life may remain.
Burn the frostroot, ground with silver moss.
Inhale the smoke with lips sealed in vow.
Let no pact be made. Let no beast be named.
Let no gate be opened. The soul is not a vessel.
It is a garden. It is to be sealed, not sown.
Refuse the yoke. Refuse the bond.
What lives within is enough.”

The words fell like stones into water.

Ning’er’s eyes widened.
“This… this is a ritual?”

“Yes. The First Seal,” Nie Li said. “It wasn’t for warriors. It didn’t give power. It refused it.”

Her brow furrowed. “Why would anyone refuse cultivation?”

Nie Li leaned forward. His voice slowed, almost reciting.
“Because cultivation was never a path upward. It was descent.
First they walked with beasts, and called it wisdom.
Then they stood in pride, and called it mastery.
At last, they sat in judgment, and named their rebellion order.”

She sat frozen.
“You’re saying… the nobles, the teachers, even my family — all of them are rebels”

“Yes,” Nie Li said quietly.

Her voice rose.
“That’s heresy.”

“It’s memory.”

“Then explain this: if cultivation is rebellion, why did cultivators die to protect us? Why did they stand between us and beasts?”

Nie Li’s hands trembled on the parchment.
“They fought bravely… but blindly. Every strike carved wounds into their own souls. They saved lives. But lost themselves.”

He glanced at her pale hands. “Your body has been fighting cultivation since you first sat in the training halls. It wasn’t disease. It was memory. Your blood already knew the garden was not meant to be sown.”

She stared at him, then whispered:
“And you? You cultivated too. You schemed. You wielded power. Why should I believe you’re different?”

Nie Li shut his eyes. The silence pressed on him like a tomb.
“I’m not different,” he said. His voice was raw. “That’s why I died. That’s why this is my second life.”

Xiao Ning’er froze.
“What?”

He opened his eyes and met hers.
“I was already broken once. Crushed beneath the Sage Emperor himself. I held the Temporal Book in my hands and still lost everything. Ziyun, Glory City, the whole world… ashes. I thought death was the end. But the Voice pulled me back. Gave me breath again. Not to play the old game. Not to conquer. But to remember.”

The knife glimmered beside her hand. She touched it lightly, eyes narrowing.
“You expect me to believe that? That you’ve lived two lives?”

“You already do,” he said quietly.

Her brow furrowed.
“What do you mean?”

He tapped the Hei Jin scroll between them.
“This language has been dead for centuries. A handful of scholars can still puzzle fragments, but finding one is like finding water in the desert. Most of the records were torched when Kong Ming fell. His writings were branded heresy — the work of a hypocrite who forbade cultivation in public yet clutched at it in secret to hold his throne.”

Ning’er said nothing. Her fingers tightened on the obsidian hilt.

“I can read it,” Nie Li said quietly. “Not because I’m special — because I remember. In my first life, I hunted scraps of this script in tombs and ruined temples. I pieced it together, letter by letter, chasing answers no one else dared to ask. And when I died, that memory stayed with me. So now, in this life, I can read what almost no one else can.”

He drew a slow breath, the parchment trembling under his hand.

“But the Seal itself — the Covenant — I never knew it before. That came only in this life. From the Voice. Not from study. From remembrance.”

You’re saying… you can read this because you already learned it once? Before you died?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head slowly, but her eyes never left his.
“If that’s true… then the Voice you keep mentioning — that’s the one who gave you this second chance?”

He nodded. “The same Voice that spoke the spiral descent. The same Voice that preserved the first seal through bloodlines. The same Voice that set this knife in your family before you were born.”

Ning’er looked down at the blade, at the script, at him.
Her lips trembled.
“If anyone else said this, I’d call them a liar. Or mad.”

She gripped the knife again, lifting it half an inch from the table. “Or maybe you are mad. Maybe you’ve read too many burned scripts and started believing the ashes.” Her voice trembled, caught between fury and fear.

“I am both,” Nie Li said softly. “A liar in my first life. Mad in this one. But I’m also telling you the truth.”

Her eyes searched his, fierce and uncertain. “Why me? Why not someone else?”

“Because you’re already carrying the First seal without knowing,” Nie Li answered. “Your body rejected cultivation because your soul seal remembers and fights back. Your grandmother guarded this knife, this scroll, because her bloodline carried fragments of the Covenant. You’re not here by accident, Ning’er. None of this is accident.”

Silence fell between them again, heavier this time, thick as stone.

Finally, she whispered, almost like a prayer she didn’t mean to speak aloud:
“Then if you’ve truly been given another life… maybe I was given to meet you in it.”

Nie Li swallowed hard. He couldn’t answer. He only reached beneath his robe and unrolled the Second Seal. Six points. One center. It glowed faintly, like embers in the morning sun light.

“This,” he said, voice steady now, “is what was given to me. The Second Seal. It doesn’t resist corruption — it refuses it. It silences every yoke. No beasts. No weapons. No soul-force. Only remembrance.”

Her eyes fixed on the star.
“And if… if someone accepted it?”

“Their cultivation would end,” Nie Li said. “But their soul would be whole.”

Her face hardened.
“And you want this… for me?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not for you. From you.”

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

He looked her in the eyes.
“I want you to cut it into me.”

Her breath caught audibly. The obsidian knife wavered in her grip, the point lowering toward the table. She stared at him — not with disbelief now, but with fear of what it would mean if he was serious. Her lips parted, but no words came.

The scrolls lay open.
The knife gleamed dark.

And the Voice whispered from the shadows: “The priestess bears the First. The patriarch will bear the Second. And the scar will remember both.”